Excel VBA – Opening the Developer Toolbar

The starting point for learning Macros and Excel VBA is to enable the Developer toolbar (also known as ribbon) in Excel. The below guide is for Excel 2016, but a similar process is used for all versions of excel.

1 – Select File > Options

In the top left hand corner of the screen click the word “File”, in the menu that then appears click options at the bottom of the list

2 – Select Customise Ribbon

In the menu that appears, select customise ribbon from the list of choices in the left hand column.

3 – Tick Developer and Ok

Highlighted above you can see the Developer option is not ticked, tick it and then click OK at the bottom to save your changes and exit the menu.

4 – Done!

You will now see that the Developer Toolbar is one of the menu options along the top, from here you can record macros, open the Visual Basic Editor, place buttons and much more.